


The Memory of the Mislaid

by Seebright



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Horror By Implications, Morbidity But In A Happy Way, Past Child Death (The Abyss), Reunion!, Shade Speculation TM, The Shades Are All Waiting Anxiously At The Door For Their Weird Sibs To Come Home, Weird As In They Haven't Died Yet, Why DO The Shades Attack?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seebright/pseuds/Seebright
Summary: They might've come sooner, if they'd known it would be so loving.
Relationships: Greenpath Vessel & Siblings
Comments: 8
Kudos: 104





	The Memory of the Mislaid

They awoke, and they were home.

The very same place they’d fought so hard to escape, and for a moment the darkness began to spark something like fear, but the Abyss wasn’t like it had been before. And just as quickly as it rose, the fear was gone as though it had never been.

They saw the broken floor below, and couldn’t quite remember why they’d wanted to leave it.

Oh, there was the memory, of course. They remembered they had been one of many, and then one of few. They remembered the deaths, the awful cracking that came when they least expected it, always when they feared it most. They remembered the dark.

It had seemed so very dark, and the darkness had eyes that never opened.

But that same darkness must have changed, for it felt so welcoming, now. The memory must be wrong, because there was no sound at all. It felt, to them, like a restful place where it had been a constricting grave before, where they’d been born and where they had, once, thought they would die. It felt open where once the walls had seemed to close in, though they’d also never moved no matter how the little claw marks hatching and cross-hatching over each other at their bases sought to make them.

It felt friendly and full where once it had felt very lonely, the Void clustering around to greet them with sunspot-white eyes, darker than the black, and the Vessel was happy.

Their siblings, though they were nearer than that now, the Vessel thought, wanted to see them. Wanted to welcome them with honest affection and gladness and the oneness of the shadows. Wanted to know what the Vessel had known, wanted to know why they’d taken so long to come home. They were very nearly a collective mind, curious and pressing and so innocent, the Vessel saw, for they had seen so little. They’d nearly all never left the Abyss, never managed to venture forth from their hatchplace.

They’d died long ago, though only now did the Vessel join them at last.

There was such regret there, flowing like void through them all as they spoke with hushed voices that did not disturb the silence and shared it like it was each their own. Such pain. Nearly the same pain, magnified a thousandfold.

Had it always felt so familiar, to hurt? Had that pain been why the Vessel had wanted so badly to leave? It only felt right now, only felt like they were grown alongside it and from it, as though to dislike it would be to dislike the murmur of their own thoughts, neutral and constant. They’d always thought they’d known the void they’d had, caught in their white mask, but perhaps they had only _seen_ it. Void was so quiet, remembered so much and only that it had been hurt, and the pain washed over them as warm and comforting as the few hugs they’d ever known, like the rush of steaming springwater soothing old wounds, something they could sink into and shake loose whatever had made them fear it, as though regret wasn’t as natural as the dripping stone.

Already the memories were distant, too bright to look at when all the Vessel saw was black so comforting and fathomless, but their siblings insisted. The Vessel, now more Shade than Vessel, could not place why, but the thought of turning away from their siblings’ pleading shook them from that pleasant stillness they’d begun to fall into. They remembered that it felt bad, unforgivable, even. They remembered they would have done anything for them.

They remembered that they had.

So they braved the light, clung to each image of the nighttime gleam of true eyes in real faces and the mornings, humid and crisp and breaking over their mask like reminders that they lived yet, recalling the intensity of color and the sharp, cutting feel of a rough-handled weapon in their hand, abrading their palm where they swung it too desperately, when they’d tried so very hard to stay away from here.

The shades around murmured their thanks, saw the things the Vessel had seen high above and were relieved, and the Vessel asked them why it had reassured them so, to see all the things they’d lost and could never hope to regain.

We don’t want them, the siblings replied. We are only glad that has not changed. Do you long for what you remember?

The Vessel knew they did not, and wondered why. It had seemed so terribly important, once, not long ago at all. Every bleeding cut and stinging burn, every sight of things vast and fearsome, crouched and delicate, they had all been things to remind them they’d been alive. And to live had been their only goal, something they’d clutched at with jealous claws and guarded against all those looming menaces that threatened it, and to their everlasting pride succeeded in keeping, right up until they hadn’t.

What had changed? They’d always thought to die would have been the greatest of failures, the worst thing they could allow to pass, having finally escaped. Yet now it was hardly a failure at all, the Vessel knew, and less appalling than life, by far. What was different, now, in the untaken breaths since they’d met that failure?

It’s the only thing _to_ change, the Void told them. The only thing you mislaid, in coming here again.

It had been their mask. Their mask had been what was wrong, it had been the mask all along making them suffer so.

Their siblings, crowded close to watch with unblinking eyes the play of the Vessel’s memory as they shared it, blurred and so distastefully vibrant, agreed readily.

Of course, it was the mask, that was the only thing they’d all had entirely in common. They’d all feared the Void, they’d all hated the Abyss, with its open, many-bladed arms and merciful offer, with its unity and affection. They all were safe here, now, their suffering ended only by their very mask’s breaking. It was the only part of them not inherently of the Void, after all. It was Pale, it was Soul, it hurt so indelibly when it fractured, when it broke. But then they were free, and not one shade among them could recall why they’d been so frightened to be so.

For wasn’t this better? Wasn’t it better not to fear, to embrace what they had been born of? The once claustrophobic, menacing dark had been felt with many hands, and revealed to be only what had been within them all along.

It wasn’t fair, the Vessel realized, and the siblings took it up like a war cry, muted and sighed like the revenants of breaths, repeated over and over among them until it petered out like a shout into a dense, consuming fog.

It wasn’t fair that there were still siblings left, still shades caught in masks. They still suffered, they still feared, they still fought with bloodied claw and shattered nail to survive. It was foolish of them, when the dark contented the Vessel and the shade-siblings so well, when it held them close and they knew they never would suffer again, never once find themselves abandoned, when it made the cold as soothing as once warmth had been.

It was wonderful, the Vessel found. Now that their siblings here had known what they’d known, there was little to separate them from the others, and the Vessel found that they liked it. Void did not do well to be lonely, and they had been nothing but for such a long time. The Void was a final shelter, and an endless family of gentle voices and shared pain, and unbreachable protection that would never leave them or be lifted by the Light ever again. They were home, and finally, finally they could rest.

But the living siblings could not be blamed, no, every single one of the shades, however briefly, had tried to live, too.

There were three, only three left alive, and one was so feebly tied to their broken mask that if not for something the Vessel could not remember but the insurmountable force of, they would have long come to join them.

Was this why they all still waited? The Vessel wondered. The siblings agreed again, all of them at once. They were not every sibling, those that hovered like black-stained imprints over their broken masks. Many others had simply gone to sleep, had been too tired and remembered too much to take up the vigil. Those that had suffered the most, and those who had hardly suffered at all.

Those who remained, the shades explained, of course did so to await their final siblings. The stragglers. Many of them had also been the ones to await the late-hatchers, those who had struggled from their eggs after the rest had gone. They remembered the siblings they had cared for, though not precisely which those had been. It would have been a difficult distinction to make, anyway, and their minds did not do well to think of life.

They suffered so needlessly, those siblings high above. They fought so hard, they bore so much. The shades kept their eyes turned to the door and waited implacably for them to arrive.

Only three. As much as they could be, the Vessel was excited. Maybe they would come home soon, and they could help their dear, brave, foolish siblings.

Yes, of course, the shades mirrored back to them. Of course, we will help. They aren’t to be blamed; they only don’t know. One day they will come when they die, or perhaps while they yet live, and we will help them.

A mask is not so hard to break, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm counting the Broken Vessel as alive on a technicality, because they hadn't gone back to the Abyss yet.
> 
> But anywho, I imagine there'd be a decent reason the Vessels aren't all functionally immortal; once you die, it can get a little hard to remember what was so great about being alive. Unless, of course, you happen to be the most stubborn, hard-headed Vessel ever to be born, in which case conventional laws of life and death are more like suggestions.


End file.
